


John H. Watson: A Headcanon

by Talizora



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, First Meetings, Graphic Depictions of War, Hopeful Ending, I've probably got all the dates wrong, John Watson-centric, M/M, NaNoWriMo, Suicidal Thoughts, basically my headcanon for john written out like a story, mentions of 9/11, pre-ASiP
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-04
Updated: 2016-11-04
Packaged: 2018-08-29 00:18:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8468557
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Talizora/pseuds/Talizora
Summary: John is one of those kids who doesn’t start fights, but is usually the one to finish them. He’s had far too many punch ups with bigots who make fun of his sister for being a lesbian. He likes to project a ‘one tough son of a bitch’ exterior, it’s easier that way to keep people off his back. And Harry’s.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I'm trying to do nanowrimo this year so I started writing out my headcanon for John's life before he met Sherlock. Once I'd finished it turned out like a little story so I thought what the hell and decided to share it. I'm thinking about doing a matching ficlet for Sherlock if the mood strikes me.

John is in his last year of high school, from a low-income family in the suburbs. Where the flats are all made out of concrete, all look the same and gangs, violence and crime are commonplace. John is a strong person, he prides himself on taking no shit from nobody. He’s tried to keep his nose clean, but growing up in this hellhole he doesn’t get much of a choice. 

John is one of those kids who doesn’t start fights but is usually the one to finish them. He’s had far too many punch ups with bigots who make fun of his sister for being a lesbian. He likes to project a ‘one tough son of a bitch’ exterior, it’s easier that way to keep people off his back. And Harry’s. 

But deep down John just wants to help people and follow his dream of becoming an A&E doctor. It'll be really exciting he thinks. The problem is that he can't afford to go to medical school on his own. His father died from heart disease when he was about 10 years old and since then his mother has struggled to make enough just to pay rent, electricity and buy school supplies for her two children. 

So when the army visits their high school where all the futureless kids from the area go it's an easy choice to make for many, John included. The army will pay for his education, he'll get to travel, have friends, they'll give him a roof over his head and feed him. He would be stupid not to join. So he does.

He steps off the bus with all the other new recruits for basic training a few months after high school  graduation. He knows it's going to be rough. But he has to get in, he desperately wants to pass their fitness, medical and psychological tests with flying colours. Otherwise, there is nowhere else for him to go and he so desperately doesn't want to go back to identical concrete flats and high unemployment rates. He'd probably have to get a night fill job at a supermarket, or worse turn to a life of drug dealing and petty crime just to make ends meet. 

These thoughts are what drive John to push himself harder, and harder. He has to get stronger, faster. He needs to stop flinching when they go out to the shooting range. Deep breath, calm, take aim, hold breath, fire.  _ Keep your eyes open _ . Never loose sight of your target. He repeats to himself over and over. 

By the end of their six months of basic John is the best shot in his squad. He is officially accepted into the army and is quickly moved to the army university campus dorms where he is to continue his combat training and complete his medical degree. Two years into his training John is the fittest and strongest he's ever been in his life, but he's also the most exhausted he's ever been in his life.

There is no time for rest or relationships, between his physical training, lectures, exams and assignments he has to turn in it's all  _ go go go go _ . Three years into his degree John is approached by his lecturer who asks him if he has a preference for his work placement. St Bartholomew's Hospital immediately comes to John's mind. It's a big hospital that deals with most of London's emergency medical care. A few more months go by and John is very happy to receive his acceptance to placement at Bart's.

It feels weird being in civilian clothing again. John's thinks when he gets dressed on the first day of his placement. For almost three and a half years John has been either wearing fatigues or his private's uniform for special occasions and  formal events. Now he's suddenly faced with choices. Should he wear trousers or jeans? A t-shirt or a button down? It's all a bit overwhelming and he feels so stupid that he's freaking out over something so simple. In the end, John growls at himself and grabs a pair of jeans and a checked button-down and decides it doesn't matter what he wears because the hospital will make him wear a coat or scrubs anyway. 

At Bart's John is assigned an internship partner, named Mike Stamford and a Doctor for them shadow. Stamford isn't in the defence force, his parents are paying for his education but he finds John very interesting and asks him all sorts of questions about what it's like to live on an army base. They get along well and take their lunch breaks together in the hospital cafeteria. 

After his placement, John returns to the base full-time to finish his degree and start his medic training for assisting soldiers on the battlefield. John loves the medic training. It's fast paced and stressful. He has to remember what to do and do it quickly before his 'patient' dies, or bleeds out or goes into shock or passes out. John is the best at CPR in his class and for a week struts around the base like a peacock after he gets his final exam papers back with all distinctions. 

He calls his mum to tell her the news and brag just a little, but instead of his mum greeting him on the other end of the phone a man's voice answers. John is confused for a moment and hangs up. He calls Harry next, she answers only after the phone rings several times. She sounds horrible, all croaky like she's been throwing up all night. John asks for his mum's new number and Harry mumbles it off absent-mindedly. John frowns and asks Harry if she's alright. She laughs and tells him not to worry about her, she's a big girl. Still worried but not willing to push his luck John says goodbye to Harry and calls his mother's new number. No one answers so John leaves a message on her answering machine. 

A few days later John's squad leader pulls him aside and sits him down in one of the Officer's offices. He takes a deep breath and looks John in the eye, and suddenly John knows. He knows something has happened to his mum. 

“I'm sorry Watson, there isn't any nice way to say this... We got a call this morning from Bart's. You’re mum was involved in a car accident. She was crossing the street when someone lost control in the snow and... I'm sorry John. She didn't make it.”

It sounds like his ears are stuffed with cotton. Everything sounds muffled and far away, he must have just missed her when he left the message.  _ Oh god. _ He'll never be able to tell her... Tell her that he made it. He received his doctorate yesterday. He's officially  _ Dr _  John Hamish Watson and his wonderful hard working mother will never know. Never. 

The next few days are a blur, he takes personal  leave and uses every last bit of the savings he's managed to put away over the last few years studying to pay for the funeral. Harry is no help, she spends all her unemployment money on booze. John is almost positive that the last time he spoke to Harry when she was sober was before he left for the army almost six years ago.

They yell and scream at each other. It's John's fault that their mother died because he was gone and hot around to help their mother. It was John’s fault that he hardly ever called or sent a letter or sent their mother money Harry tells him. What good was he? Too busy focused on his ridiculous dreams and career to care for her or their mother. John almost decks her but stops himself. He kicks Harry out of their mother's flat and that's it. John and Harry don't speak again until John being deployed to Afghanistan for the first time. 

John clears out all his Mother's belongings and turns the keys into the real estate agency. With a heavy heart and a shoebox full of keepsakes, John returns to work for the Army. First chance he gets he signs himself up for deployment. 

John had been with the army for seven years when he is first deployed to Afghanistan. It's a humanitarian effort to help the citizens break free of their dictatorship. John is part of a team of medical staff at a field hospital that treats everyone regardless of where they came from or whose side they're on.

John meets a few lovely American female soldiers and some very exciting Australian male soldiers. He sleeps with both and eventually builds up a reputation of 'Three Continents Watson' as he'd slept with people from Europe, America and Australia. After two years of deployment, John is part of a group of soldiers who are brought back home for further training before being deployed again in the winter.

It's while John is already deployed on his second tour that 9/11 happens. Their unit gets word quickly from the US base that there had been a direct attack on US soil. Everyone watches the news feed with held breath and John suddenly realises that this tour isn't going to be the usual two years of work then home again for 9 months.

He and his unit are already here, they are perfectly set up to house at least 30 seriously injured soldiers or civilians and a 100 more in a non-life threatening condition. As John watches the buildings collapse on their fuzzy TV feed it dawns on him. There were placed here in Afghanistan on purpose, there was no other reason John could think of as to why so many foreign soldiers had been stationed in the middle east. It must have been connected somehow.

It's not even a week later when John truly gets his first taste of real war. It's dirty and bloody and scares the absolute shit out of him. It's not just other men he has to worry have concealed weapons, or bombs strapped to their chests but women and children too. Nothing is safe anymore even the simple routes they have taken previously around the town they've been helping is now littered with car bombs and old refurbished land mines. Who knows where they got those from!? John watches as his squad mates get shot, exploded and stabbed. He helps clean horrific burns on tiny bodies and dig shrapnel out of pregnant women.

John's second deployment this time in Helmand lasts five years. It's the longest deployment he and the rest of his unit have ever experienced. In fact, John has been in and out of Afghanistan so much in the last 10 years that he can speak pretty good Pashto and can usually hold a basic conversation with the locals in Dari if he must.

There are other members of his squad that speak more fluently but John had never been taught a word before his first deployment so he's quite proud that he's picked up as much as he has. It's a small thing for him to focus on, rather than dwelling on the lives he couldn't save in surgery or the lives he's taken on the battlefield.

John has by now, lost count of how many people he's shot. He’s not sure if he killed every person he’s shot but it wasn't from lack of trying. Sometimes, John thinks back to the moment when the Army came to his high school and painted a picture of travel, excitement, loyalty and friendship. He wonders if he had his time again would he choose to enlist again? Would he put himself in this dry, cold, hot desert with sand that gets everywhere. With gunpowder burns permanently etched into his hands and the inability to sleep a whole night through without jumping at the slightest sound.

Would he ever choose to keep his innocence of the knowledge of what a man's last dining breath sounds like. The sound a jet makes as it carpet bombs a town? The feeling, the horrible feeling of his gun clicking to empty in the middle of a firefight before he can reload.

John thinks, with a considerable amount of emotional detachment that the answer would shock most people. Because the truth is... He would choose to enlist again. He would choose it every time. Being here in the middle of a war that makes no sense makes John feel alive, in the worst way. Each breath in that smells of smoke and gun oil and burning hot metal and blood is like breathing the essence of life.

Everything about it makes John's heart beat faster, his adrenalin spike, it excites him. The more life threatening the situation the better in John's mind. It doesn't take long for his teammates to figure it out. Adrenalin Junky they call him. Maybe when he's back to civilian life he ought to take up skydiving or base jumping. John thinks the reality is much worse. If John had to give this up, what has now become such an essential part of him he would cease to exist. He would die here, he was certain. He wouldn’t want to go any other way. He'd want to die doing what he loves. Being surrounded by danger and filled with adrenaline.

John and a few other hundred soldiers are rotated home to rest and get brought up to speed on recent training methods and strategies. The leave lasts longer than John would have liked. He's eager to get back. He already misses it. A lot of his team leave the service upon their return. They hug John tight and wish him luck, tell him to play it safe and don't be too eager to die. They promise to keep in touch, but they never do. Once they’re out that's it. They don't want to be reminded of the horrors of war. John's fine with it, his old friends are replaced with new and finally, finally John is deployed again. John doesn’t know it, but this deployment will be his last.

Kandahar is just like the rest of Afghanistan. It's hot in summer and cold at night, there is sand and wind and humidity sometimes. Taliban are everywhere and John loves it. He's turned his back on cool, wet London weather. He thinks to himself that he will feel cold forever now that he's lived through a few real middle eastern summers.

John’s  stood and watched car bombs explode and felt the heat and burn of the flames. He's been knocked flat on his arse from a grenade and showered with sand and dirt from a homemade rocket launcher. John has removed more shrapnel than he would like to admit, he's saved countless people from bullet wounds and actually delivered three babies in his career in the army so far.

So to say that John was expecting the hit in his shoulder would be an understatement. It was a Taliban sniper, he must have been watching John for awhile as he pulled the civilians from the burning husk that was once a bus. John had ripped off one man's shirt and used it as a tourniquet to help stop the bleeding pouring from the man's arm. He'd nicked an artery, John knew he only had a few seconds to save the man's life and was trying to work quickly.

Unfortunately, John never got the chance, the sniper took aim and shot John through his left shoulder. The bullet kept going and hit the man John was trying to save and killed him instantly. It took a few moments for John to realise he'd been shot in the back. His hand was steady as it lifted up to the exit wound near his collarbone, his blood was warm and wet and then suddenly the pain exploded inside him like the bomb that has obliterated the bus a few moments ago and he blacked out.

John woke up with a huge involuntary jerk and screamed as it caused his mangled shoulder blade to crunch and the stitches across his chest and back to pull tight.  _ Holy fuck, I'm alive. How is this possible? _ John thinks wildly to himself.

He lifts his right hand up slowly and gently probes at the gauze covered wound on his chest. He presses gently and gasps at the spike of pain. The bullet must have missed everything essential. It was a miracle he wasn’t dead. The wound is very hot to the touch even through the layers of gauze. Infection, John realises.

So he wasn’t out of the woods yet then. John lets his head fall back onto the bed and blinks up at the fabric ceiling of the field hospital. He was alive, thank God. For all of his gusto about wanting to die on the battlefield when it came to the moment when he was faced with his mortality all John could think was - no. Not like this.

The infection takes John's mind soon after. John sweats and shakes and vomits. He prays to a God he never believed in.

_ Please, let me live. Please, God, let me live. _

It hurts, worse than the bullet. The medics and nurses clean and pack the wound as best they can but the swelling breaks the stitches twice before they finally get John clean and cut and burn away the infected flesh.

The scar will be huge and ugly. Twisted from the stretched and shredded skin being knit back together again and again. But John doesn’t care about that, all he can think is  _ I’m alive, I survived. _

The first time John tries to stand up he falls. He's not worried about it though, he's been very sick and has lost a lot of weight fighting the infection so really it’s not surprising that his legs crumpled under him. It's a week later and John still cannot stand on his own when the worry starts to set in.

John is flown back to the UK with a group of other injured soldiers and is checked for brain damage that could have been caused by his fever and infection but the doctors find nothing wrong. They check his legs for damage or shrapnel and that turns up clean too. They check his spine to see if the bullet in his shoulder could have affected the nerves but he's perfectly healthy.

They assign him a psychiatrist and he's diagnosed with a psychosomatic limp. Ella, his therapist, means well but sometimes John wants to punch her. It's not so bad John thinks. He's saved up quite a bit of money from his time being deployed so he takes the regulation veteran bedsit and pension and goes to his physical therapy and other therapy sessions like a good boy.

Harry calls him, they meet for lunch and she gives him her old mobile phone. Keep in touch she says. Clara invites John over for dinner and explains that she and Harry are getting a divorce. John sighs, if he's honest he's surprised they've been together as long as they had. High school sweethearts and all, but Harry's drinking has only gotten worse and Clara had finally had enough. John can't blame her. Clara is too good for Harry.

John visits his mother's grave once he's got the hang of the cane. He stands in front of her headstone and just stares. He feels ridiculous talking to a headstone but Ella had told him he needed to make peace with his mother's death and so, here he was.

“Mum.” John starts then clears his throat. “Mum, I made it. I'm a Doctor. Got my doctorate a few years ago with all distinctions. The army was fun, at least until I got shot. That part sucked. I miss you mum, I wish you were still here.” John reaches out and pats the top of the headstone lightly before standing at attention, saluting and marching as best he's able with the cane away. He hoped that would be enough ‘closure’ to keep Ella happy. He certainly wasn’t going to be doing this again.

Harry frequently John calls in the middle of the night, so drunk she can't even finish a sentence. John yells at her, he tells her she's throwing her life away and  giving up on Clara. Clara who put up with her shit and crappy behaviour for years.

“She deserves better from you Harry. Pull yourself together and get help.” He tells her before she hangs up on him. John sighs and throws the mobile across the tiny bedsit. He rolls over onto his side in bed and begins the calming breathing exercise Ella had drilled into him. His left hand continues to clench and cramp spasmodically at the duvet.

It's not long after Harry’s last midnight phone call that John starts his little routine with his gun. He can't believe he managed to nick it from the base before he left. No one suspects the cripple John grumbles to himself. He sits at the tiny desk, in the tiny bedsit and pulls open the top draw. Everything is turning grey. His whole life used to be gold and white. The heat of the sun on his back. The weight of his pack, his gun, surrounded by other soldiers, friends. Now he was stuck here, cold and alone. Stagnant.

John's hand trembles and cramps violently and he presses it hard against his thigh to try and stop it. He closes the drawer and instead of blowing his brains out he finishes his tea.

This cycle continues every morning. John stares at his gun, his hand shakes, he closes the draw and he drinks tea. Then the nightmares start. Ella says he's suffering from PTSD, but John thinks it's something more like despair and depression. He just can't make himself get out of bed some days. He just lays there and presses his trembling hand harder and harder into the mattress. On his last visit to Ella, she had gifted him a new laptop and told him to write a blog about everything that happens to him. It's a stupid idea. Nothing happens to him. Not anymore.

_ Look Ella. I'm writing my blog. _

John types disdainfully. This whole thing's a joke. The only good part that's come from it was getting in touch with Bill again. He and a bunch of his old rugby team from high school are meeting up for drinks in a few days. That's something John supposed but he's worried about seeing them again. John's not the same as he was, will they be able to tell he's broken?

Harry finds his blog, the ping sound his phone makes when he gets the automatic notification email 'YOU'VE GOT A NEW COMMENT' startles him awake around 2am.

_ Who's Ella?? You got yourself a woman at last? What's she like?xx x Send a pic!! _

Drinks with the boys aren't actually all that bad. They drink way too much, but it's fun. They pointedly don't ask about John's cane or the intermittent tremor in his left hand. For a few hours, John actually feels normal. Bill Murray meets him for lunch and they catch up. Bill saved his life in Afghanistan, he would clean his wound every few hours regardless of how delirious John was or how much pain it caused. He's a good nurse.

He had come back to civilian life with the same injured troops John had. Bill had met up with his old girlfriend from before his deployment and proposed to her. He's getting married. Other people are moving on, continuing their lives but John is stuck in his miserable fucking grey bedsit alone with his gun for company.

There have been a lot of suicides in London recently, all of them having taken the same poison. John wonders where they got it and if poison would be a better way to go than a bullet in his brain.

The next day John visits Ella and decides to take a longer route through a park before catching the tube back.

That morning John had started awake from the worst nightmare he'd ever had. He'd spent a good half hour sobbing brokenly into his pillow until the sun rose. He didn't tell Ella this though she was busy harping on about the stupid blog thing she wanted him to do.

It obviously wasn't working. If anything it was making it worse, it was clearer than ever to John that his civilian life was boring. Nothing ever happened, all his friends were either still deployed or retired and getting married. There was no place for broken John in their lives and the twitching in his hand prevented him from being a useful A&E Doctor. He was now looking down the barrel of the end of his savings and having to become a GP. Treating colds, nappy rash and prostate exams. It would drive him mad. He’d finished himself off with his gun before that, he's sure.

“John! JOHN WATSON!” Someone calls and John turns to see Mike Stamford. _ Holy shit he got fat. _ They get a coffee, Christ it's awful.  _ Blargh  _ John grimaces and his hand clenches.

“Staying in London?” Mike asks.

“On an army pension!?” John laughs.

“What about a flatshare?”

“Come on... Who would want me for a flatmate?” John sighs.

“You know, you're the second person to say that to me today.”

Mike takes John to Bart's to meet his friend who's looking for a flatmate. John stares up at the sign on the side of the building. He hasn't been here since his mother died.  _ Christ that way a long time ago. _ He follows Mike down into the bowels of the hospital to the labs near the morgue.

John had experienced a bit of culture shock before since coming back from Afghanistan. Technology moved on while he was away crawling around in the desert. Computers and smartphones and laptops are all common place now. But the transformation of the lab and hospital that John has spent so much of his time learning to be a Doctor in was astonishing.

“Bit different my from my day.” John jokes, Mike gives him a knowing smile. There is a man sitting at a microscope, he's got the most fabulous hair John has ever seen. He wonders if it's naturally that curly.

“Mike, may I borrow your phone? No signal on mine.” The man says.

_ Wow, those cheekbones. _ Is the first thought John has when he sees the face of the stranger.

“Sorry, must have left it in my other coat. You could use the landline?” Mike says.

John is still staring.  _ Stop staring, stop, stop,  _ _ stop _ _. _ He thinks madly to himself.

“You can use mine.” John blurts out instead of what he actually wanted to say: please tell me you're the flatmate oh my God. The stranger walks over to John.  _ Jesus did he just sway his hips like that on purpose!? _ Thanks him and takes his phone.

John watches him as he turns his back and can't physically stop himself from not looking at his arse.  _ Perfection. _

“Afghanistan or Iraq?”

The question is so sudden and unexpected that John is confused. “Sorry, what?” He’s entirely too distracted by all 6 foot of a real-life Mr Darcy come to life in front of him.

“Which is it, Afghanistan or Iraq?”

“Afghanistan. How did you know...?”  _ Did real-life Mr Darcy just checking me out!? _ John is reeling.  _ What is going on? How could this guy know he's been to Afghanistan... Had Mike told him? _

After a small conversation with a small mousy woman, real-life Mr Darcy returns to his microscope.

“How do you feel about the violin?”

John stares for a moment before looking at Mike. He just smirks knowingly at John. “What?” John asks again, feeling like an idiot.

“I play the violin when I'm thinking. Sometimes I don't talk for days on end. Would that bother you? Potential flatmates should know the worst about each other.”

John's brain is in overdrive. Still trying to follow this train crash of a conversation. He looks at Mike again. “You... You told him about me?”

“Not a word.” Mike's smirk widens and he looks between John and real-life Mr Darcy.

John straightens and looks at the handsome stranger again. “Then who said anything about flatmates?” Real life Mr Darcy - John really needed to find out this guy's name - picks up his coat and slips it on.

“I did. Told Mike this morning that I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for. Now here he is just after lunch with an old friend, clearly just home from military service in Afghanistan. Wasn't a difficult leap.”

“How  _ did  _ you know about Afghanistan?”

“Got my eye on a nice place in central London. Together we should be able to afford it.”

_ The cheekbones are even better up close. _ John's brain giggles hysterically as real-life Mr Darcy steps closer.

“We'll meet there tomorrow evening, seven o'clock. Sorry, gotta dash. I think I left my riding crop in the mortuary.”

_ Will we? On God, he's leaving! Stop him!! At least get his name you stupid idiot, Watson! _

“Is that it?” John asks. Christ has he managed to say anything remotely intelligent this whole time?

“Is that what?”

“We've only just met and we're gonna go look at a flat?”

“Problem?”

_ YES! YES BIG PROBLEM!  _ John screams internally. “We don't know a thing about each other, I don't even know where we're meeting. I don't even know your name.” _ Oh god, did he just check me out again!? _

“I know you’re an Army doctor and you’ve been invalided home from Afghanistan. I know you’ve got a brother who’s worried about you but you won’t go to him for help because you don’t approve of him – possibly because he’s an alcoholic; more likely because he recently walked out on his wife. And I know that your therapist thinks your limp’s psychosomatic – quite correctly, I’m afraid.”

John glances down at his cane. He'd totally forgotten about it for the first time since he saw real-life Mr Darcy.  _ How could he know about Harry? _

“That's enough to be going on with, don't you think?”

Why did that suddenly become the sexiest pickup line John has ever heard? The stranger turns back to the door and makes to leave.  _ Shit! I still don't know his name... Ask! Quick! _

But before John can open his mouth the stranger opens the lab door and says. “The name’s Sherlock Holmes and the address is 221B Baker Street.”

And he fucking  _ winks _ , oh god maybe he  _ was  _ checking him out!? John hopes so, he wants Sherlock Holmes... Bad.

Sherlock nods to Mike and with a twirl he's gone. John looks at Mike for some kind of explanation.

“Yeah, he's always like that.”

Later when John had returned to his fucking miserable bedsit and sat down on the bed. He thinks about Sherlock Holmes, well that's not entirely true. The truth was that since they had met at Bart's earlier John hasn't stopped thinking about Sherlock Holmes. John takes out his mobile phone and flicks through the menu to find Messages Sent.

The last message reads: 

> If brother has green ladder  
>  arrest brother.  
>  SH

Puzzled, John looks at the message for a long moment, then looks across to the table where his laptop is waiting. He pushes himself to his feet and limps over to the table. John sits down and pulls his laptop towards himself. He opens his web browser to Google and types “Sherlock Holmes”.

And the rest, as they say. Is history. 


End file.
